Pick Your Battles

You stare at Sun’s library, trying to figure out what he’s left on top of it. A Lotleth Giant, for example, would kill you outright on his next turn. A Selective Snare would also be pretty bad, seeing that it could wipe out most of your side of the board. And something that removes your Sky Tether would free up his 3/4 Aeromunculus - also not a good prospect for you.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that he’s placed something completely irrelevant on top of his library, and is just messing with your head.

“Well?” Sun asks.

“Well what?”

“I just declared the end of my turn,” Sun says patiently. “I asked if you had anything to play in response, and you started giving my library a weird look.”

You’re in the middle of another Guilds of Ravnica / Ravnica Allegiance Sealed Deck event today, and you have a slightly better handle on how the combined guilds work with each other. That doesn’t mean that your cards are any better, but it does mean that you have far less of a headache now than last week.

Your opponent’s fortitude, however, is nothing short of admirable: Sun has been so stoic that his expression wouldn’t be amiss in a professional poker tournament. Having just dropped a Deadly Visit on your newly-cast Flight of Equenauts, Sun surveilled for two and left one of those cards on top of his library. It’s exactly that one card that’s been driving you nuts for the last few minutes.

That said, Sun still has to draw whatever he’s placed there, so you have one more turn to see what you can do on your end. “I’ll pop my Gruul Locket to draw two cards,” you say.

Sun nods, and you add a Venerated Loxodon and a Root Snare to your hand. That, you admit, neatly solves a few scenarios for you. The Loxodon gives you an additional blocker, and the Fog effect means that your opponent isn’t likely to win through combat damage.

Then you move to your draw step, and pull some removal in the form of a Titanic Brawl. That makes you feel a whole lot better, especially since you can probably foil any attack that Sun’s planning to make in the near future. There’s still the problem of what happens if he draws a Lotleth Giant, though. Or, for that matter, what happens if he draws more removal… or surveil cards.

If you think you’ve got a great solution in mind, don’t put it in the comments! Instead, send it to puzzles@gatheringmagic. com with the subject line “Puzzle - Pick Your Battles” by 11:59 P.M. EST on Monday, February 11, 2019. We’ll include the best ones in next week’s article along with the next puzzle!

“The line for this one ends rather simply: Getting a pumped-up Gateway Sneak through for lethal,” David Foregger writes.“But setting it up involves a few incidental side-effects and unusual targets, and an unexpected use of Omnispell Adept - casting a sorcery for *more* than its usual cost, but getting it out at instant speed. I had to double-check Oracle to be sure it allows that.”

“It’s very tempting to try to destroy Casey's blockers and force through enough combat damage,” Chris Billard observes.“With two castings of Bedeck and sacrificing Footlight Fiend to Severed Strands, you can almost do it… but Casey would still have at least one blocker. That would be enough to stop either the Glowspore Shaman or Omnispell Adept, leaving her with 1 life.” The fact that one of your five creatures - Junktroller - can’t attack at all means that an alpha strike won’t work as well as you want it to.

The judge call is important to your plans because as David notes, you’ll need to show your opponent that Omnispell Adept lets you cast sorcery spells at instant speed. This is necessary to the solution, as Sergey Sirotin writes:

At the end of the opponent's turn, tap all your lands for mana (the Gateway Plaza for ).

Go to combat and attack with the unblockable Gateway Sneak for lethal.

“So this puzzle ended up being broken down into needing an unblockable lethal Gateway Sneak,” Brian Weinreich writes, “because otherwise there's no way to get through Casey's board. You don't often use removal spells to target your own permanents, but sometimes you have to get creative and utilize uncommon modes on cards to cross the finish line. Your draw for the turn ends up being irrelevant, and actually getting back Footlight Fiend makes it unnecessary. You have all the cards you need to win without it.”

“I really enjoyed the way both sides of Bedeck // Bedazzle were necessary,” David adds, “and how the purpose of Bedazzle was twofold: Getting the Plaza to your graveyard and dealing 2 damage to put Casey in range for our pumped-up Sneak. The instant-speed Severed Strands is the cherry on top.”

“This puzzle also actually made me like Omnispell Adept in Limited for a moment,” William H muses.“How dare you try to corrupt our minds in such a way?”